Hi There,

My Great Grandfather (Henry Albert Ferriman) was also in the Roberts Horse Unit at the same time as Mr Thurston, I was hoping to to find out as much as I can about the Unit as I'm compiling a Family history.

Kind regard

Marc Ferriman
[url=mailtourbanworks@gmail.com]durbanworks@gmail.com[/url]

Great post! I liked the information you contained in it. I would have never discovered this website if I did not find it Googling random things!  http://www.creston.museum.bc.ca/index.php...=26

It mght not look like spring out there today, but spring is definitely here and summer is coming.  I can tell, because there are more and more people stopping in to visit the Museum!

We tend to get pretty quiet over the winter - I might see one group every week or two, coming in for a tour.  But these days, it starts to pick up - I can pretty much count on at least one group every day.  Today, there were four!  I definitely have to brush up on my tour-guide talk!

So, just in case you're wondering, yes, the Museum is open for tours at this time of year.  We are still working on a couple of new exhibits, so there's one room in particular that's rather empty at the moment (we're working on filling it up, though!), but otherwise you'll see pretty much everything you'd normally see in the middle of summer.

The Museum is open whenever I'm here - generally Tuesday-Saturday, 9:00 - 12:00 and 1:00 - 4:00.  I am a staff of one, though, at this time of year, so it's always a good idea to give me a call (250-428-9262) before you come in, just to make sure I haven't got called away.

Hi, Dona,

We get quite a few inquiries about this cabin!  I've posted the story about it here.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. I have taken many pictures of this cabin at different times of the year and often wondered about the story behind it. Thanks again.

I finished up the histories of the businesses represented by these seals today.  One of them is from the Creston Valley Recreation Centre Society.

This was originally the Creston Valley Civic Centre Society, but in June, 1973, its directors decided to change the name.  According to the minutes, there was extensive discussion, the decision was unanimous, and unanimously ratified at the Annual General Meeting the following April. But the minutes don't give any reasons for the name change.

The new (at that time) Rec Centre had opened some time before, there were no major changes in membership or directors, and the purposes of the Society don't seem to have changed.

My idle curiosity is aroused - why did they change the name?

Hi, Rob,

There isn't any writing, other than what's on the signs held by the students.  There's a fence behind the lady on the left, and in the low-res version here it does look like there might be something written - but it's just a plain board fence.

But everyone - except the bearded guy - is pretty well dressed, which might be explained by a Sunday School (Sunday-best attire).

So one google search later and I might have an answer:
could it have been a Sunday school, I say this because of a Gesto United Church in Essex County Ontario(it was closed down in 2008).
what do the words say on the far left behind the lady in the white dress?

Occasionally, we get photos brought in to us that really belong somewhere else - when the people or places portrayed in the photos aren't local.  We've sent photos to more approriate homes all over the world, including one of a train wreck in Tennessee and another of a war memorial in New South Wales.

Determining where these photos should go requires a bit of detective work, and sometimes, there are precious few clues given in the photograph!  Take this one, for example:



This photo actually came to us from the Quesnel Museum, who tentatively identified it as the Lister School (it's not).  Here's what we can glean from the photograph itself:

One girl is holding a sign that reads "Gesto (or Gisto) School, F. Clemenson Teacher" (left-most sign).
The photo was taken on June 30, 1903, according to a second sign being held by another student (right-most sign).
The school building is a substantial brick (probably red brick) building.
There is one African student in the photo (third row, standing, on the right, immediately to the left of the tall young man) and two other students who don't appear to be Caucasian (the two girls immediately to the right of the right-most sign). Otherwise, all the students and teachers appear to be Caucasian.
The man standing on the far right is the only man with a beard and appears to be more roughly-dressed than the others.
One of the children (the small boy, second row, standing, on the far left) is identified as "Albert."

Any guesses where this is?  Who's the bearded guy?  Of the four girls standing near the front on the right, why is the one on the left absolutely glowering at the camera? And, on the left, one little girl appears to be very intrigued by something on the ground (she's bending down, in front of the boy with the dark vest and white shirt) - I wonder what has caught her attention?

I can offer a free family pass to the Museum for the summer for the most creative and/or plausible suggestion!

I mentioned about a week ago that I'd received an email out of the blue from a descendant of Robert Stark, one of the artists featured in our recent Art/History exhibit.  Now Phil has added to the Archives' collection by sending us a portrait of Robert Stark at age 34, painted by his wife, Flora:



He also sent us a couple of letters, written by Robert to his daughter, Freya, in Italy.  One, dated October 1927, is really interesting:  Robert suffered a stroke, had immediately sent a telegram to his daughter to inform her, and then a few days later wrote her this letter to reassure her that he was doing well.  In it, he also tells her about the final arrangements he'd made for himself, in the event he didn't "pull round," as he puts it.



The other letter, dated January 1926, provides some details about Robert's ranch at the top of 16th Avenue.  He refers to a bad storm that caused him to replace four acres of fruit trees, and I think that must have been the blizzard that hit the Creston Valley in December, 1924.  Damage was extensive, including to several orchards.  It's the same storm that wrecked the original Creston Public Library building (read about that here).  In his letter, Robert mentions that the storm prevented him travelling to Italy to visit Freya, as, if it hadn't come along, he "should have made at least 1,000 pounds."

The letters were originally published in Freya Stark's autobiography, Traveller's Prelude (1983).

Today, I resolved not to get sidetracked, as happens so often around here.  Today, I was determined to finish up a whole pile of administrative tasks, research requests, and grant applications that had my desk looking like a paper factory after a tornado, and I was not going to get distracted from taking care of that!



Well, I got my desk cleared off (look, a whole section in the middle cleared right down to the wood) and only one small stack of things left to deal with.  I'm quite proud of that, even if Lois thinks I'm demented.

But I confess, I did get sidetracked today, despite my good intentions.  This afternoon, Bob Vigne brought in this fascintaing little document:



It is an unemployment insurance record book - the predecessor to the Records of Employment we use today.  The employer would have one of these for each employee, and when that employee was laid off, fired, or quit, he or she would have to get this book from the boss to confirm his or her contributions to the Unemployment Insurance Program.


The pages inside have spaces for each week of the year, where the employer affixes stamps for the amounts contributed to UI, and writes the business's registration number.  Most of the stamps here show contributions of 76 cents per week.

The instructions recommend keeping it under lock and key.

The Creston Review of October 30, 1925 refers to an "ice-house flavoured gale" blowing through the Creston Valley.  I'm sure you'd agree we've got another one today!

I feel sorry for the electrical crew, working on the upgrade to the Museum's electrical system.  They're nearly done, and they shut off the power yesterday to connect the new panel - what a day to be working in a stone building with no heat!

Just a reminder - this is the last week to see Art/History at the Creston Library!  We take it down on Saturday morning, and most of the artwork goes back into storage - so if you haven't seen it already, don't wait!  It's open throughout Library hours.

Harry Miller has just donated this Motorola bag phone to the Creston Museum for our upcoming Office Evolutions exhibit:



This is one of a series of bag phones that Motorola produced between 1992 and 2000.  They were very durable, and produced 3 watts of power, compared to the 0.6 watts most cell phones produce today, giving them a great range from cell phone towers and making them very popular with truckers and people living in rural areas.

According to Wikipedia, this phone is based on earlier models, but made more marketable to the average cell phone customer by reducing the size and weight of the battery pack (the rectangular object at the top of the photo) and putting them in more fashionable leather bags.  Now, by today's standards, any cell phone with a full-size handset is not small, but when you compare this one to its immediate predecessor, it is decidedly smaller:



The phone that Harry has just donated to us is in working condition, but unfortunately, the bag phones operate on an old analog cell system that has now become extinct.

Harry used this phone while doing forestry work out of Nordegg, AB.  He says it saved the lives of two people, who were injured in accidents and required search and rescue services.

If you've been to see our Art/History exhibit at the Creston Library, you might recognise this watercolour.  It's of the Creston Flats, and on the back is marked Robert Stark, 1899-1900.

This is a bit of a mystery.  Robert Stark was a well-known orchardist here, but he didn't arrive here from England until 1911 - so we've been trying to decide between two possibilities: did he visit the Creston Valley ten years before moving here permanently, or is the date on the painting wrong?

Well, we still don't have a definitive answer to that question.  But just the other day I got an inquiry from someone in England, asking what information we have on his ancestors, Robert Stark and his brother, William P. Stark.

The person asking didn't know of any visit Robert made to Canada before 1909, but apparently Robert did make many voyages across the Atlantic - at least two before settling here, and many afterwards.  So it is very possible that he had come here in 1899 or 1900 and painted his view of the Valley.

I had a very intersting package land on my desk, full of art cards made by Lola Sherstobitoff.  She's a photographer from Thrums, and visited the Museum last summer.  Now she has turned her stunning photography into equally-stunning notecards showcasing the Museum's exhibits!

There are twenty-six of them, and we wiill be selling them through our gift shop.  Here are some of my favourites.

Today, I got to crawl into a display case.  This display case, to be exact:



As you can see, this required pulling it out a little from the wall (it's heavy!), ducking under the stairs, stepping over that basket beside it, crawling behind the display case, and finally wriggling my arm and shoulder into it to get out the stuff inside.  Quite fun - at least until the phone rang! And I emerged well-covered in dust bunnies and sawdust, but fortunately no creepy-crawlies.

Why did I do this?  To get out several corporate seals - you can see a few of them on the floor in front of the display case.

Altogether, we have seventeen corporate seals:



Most of them are local, and represent everything from the Creston Valley Co-operative Association and the Creamery, to the Lister Waterworks District and the Creston Valley Hospital Improvement District.  Three of them came from breweries in Fernie, Cranbrook, and Nelson, and represent the breweries that were combined into Interior Breweries in 1959 - now Columbia Brewery.  One, from the Kettle Valley Investment Company of Nelson is a complete mystery.

The square-based one in the bottom right of this photo is actually an estate seal, from Freckleton in Crawford Bay - that's the ranch of the Harrisons, where Wedgwood Manor is today.

Over the next few days, we'll be researching the histories of these businesses and organisations, and looking for photos of them, to add to our Office Evolutions exhibit.  I'll keep you posted on all the interesting things we discover!

That's so interesting - I lived in Creston and went to highschool with the Thurstons.  Neat to see all these old documents.

Tom Thurston came in to the office today.  As it happens, he is the grandson of Richard Thurston, one of the four Creston Valley residents we have identified - so far - who were veterans of the Boer War.

Tom has documents relating to his grandfather's service, both in the Boer War and the First World War, and he was kind enough to bring them in for us to take a look at.  They include Richard's discharge paper:



According to this, Mr. Thurston enlisted on November 27, 1899, and served with Lord Roberts' Horse until May 31, 1901.

Roberts' Horse was a mounted unit formed of men from all over the world who had made their way to South Africa.  The unit fought in many of the major battles of the Boer War, and Thurston's service was "exemplary."  He was mentioned in despatches at least once.

According to the discharge papers, Mr. Thurston attained the rank of sergeant, but, five years later, when he applied for the Queen's SOuth Africa medal, he was a Lieutenant.  This is his request form, dated September 13, 1906:



He has requested six clasps, or bars, one for each of the the engagements he participated in: Relief of Kimberley (15 Feb 1900); Paardeburg (17-26 Feb 1900) Driefontein (10 Mar 1900) Johannesburg (29 May 1900) Diamond Hill (11012 June 1900) and Wittenbergen (1-29 July 1900).

The discharge paper has a note, handwritten in red, that he paid 20 pounds for his Distinguished Conduct Medal, which he received on September 24, 1901.

Yesterday, Carrie got three objects catalogued, which means it was inevitable that, today, we'd have four more things donated.  And sure enough, we did - but what great things!



Not everything is destined for the artifact collection. Pat Williamson brought in seventeen copies of Helena White's book, Sixty Bloomin' Years, and since we already have several copies for reference here, and Helena doesn't need any more for her own collection, we'll be putting these ones in the gift shop instead.



Pat also brought in two pen-and-ink drawings.  This is one of them; the other shows just a house and trees along a river.  They were in either the Archibald House on Erickson back road, or in the Faynor house on the Archibald property.  We don't know, though, whether they are local scenes or not - does anybody recognise this?



Another goody brought in today was a wallet full of bank drafts, grain sales receipts, and other financial documents, dating from about 1942 to the early 1950s.  They were found in the attic of an old house in Creston, though they're all from Saskatchewan, brought here by a family who moved here in the late 1950s.  We will probably send them on to a museum in Saskatchewan, but there are a few things that might fit very well in our Office Evolutions exhibit this summer.



Now, this latest addition is definitely going to find a permanent home in the Museum's collections.  It's a game, called "The Fort."  The balls and pins are missing, but it seems to be kind of a cross between pool and bowling, played on a table top: players shoot small balls into the maze with the cue that you can see on the right side of the picture, and get points for knocking down certain pins inside the maze.  The ruler in front of it gives you a bit of an idea of the size - about two feet across in each direction.  This one came out of the Cooper house in Wynndel, and was donated this afternoon by Ed and Sylvia Turner.

You know how I often say there's always something happening down here at the Museum?  Well, today was one of those days when everything was happening.



John was the first one in, to go through newspapers from 1914-1919 researching Creston's role in the First World War.  He's found many interesting details so far, including the name of a lady who appears to have been one of the few women to enlist from Creston - she served as a nurse in a French hospital.  He has also been able to add two names to our list of people who served in the Boer War and later moved to Creston.  The names we have so far are W. T. H. Smith; Richard Thurstonl Percy Foote; and John Blinco.  If you happen to know of any others, we'd sure love to hear from you!

Next in was Carrie, who never lets me take her picture, but got a fair bit of cataloguing out of the way this morning.  That's a never-ending job - as soon as we catalogue one donated artifct, two more come in.  So I am very grateful to Carrie for helping keep up, and I won't argue too much about the no-pictures thing!



Bunny and Sharon were in too, this morning.  They are sifting through the collections and weeding out some of the duplicates we have.  Today they were looking at crocheted doilies and men's watches.

Eileen brought in the newsletters she got ready to mail out, Lois brought in the copier toner she'd picked up for me, the quilting ladies were busy over in the Carr Building, and the electrical work continues.

Very exciting news this week: we are well underway on a major upgrade of the electrical systems in the main museum building! We replaced all the wiring in the Founders Hall when we renovated it a couple of years ago, and with this project, all our buildings will be up to code.  Yaay!  No more scary, fuse-blowing, fire-hazard electrical systems!

Here are the guys from Mad Dog Electrical working in the dining room:



They started in the Loft on Monday, and are already about halfway through the Museum, replacing all the wiring and adding a couple of outlets here and there.  In a few days they'll replace this very scary old electrical panel:



and tie the new one in with another one up in the model railway room.  That will eliminate one of the four meters we have on the property.  We're also replacing all of the incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs, which are the best available for use in museums.



There's a bunch of equipment and materials in the building right now, so we have to close it to the public for the next week or so.  As you can see, it's just a bit too much of an obstacle course right now to have people through! 

The guys have been great about using drop cloths and taking care of the objects on display, but they have had to move a few things around, so we're going to have a fair bit of clean-up work to do when all is said and done.  I'll let you know when that happens - maybe you'd like to come down and give us a hand?

Stan Hendren and his son came in today, to take a tour through the Museum.  Specifically, they came to see this:



This pool table was purchased by Stan's grandfather, George Hendren, in 1895, and brought out from Ontario shortly after that.

One of the best parts of working here - I know, I've said this before - is getting to talk to people who have a connection to the objects we have on display.  Stan used to play pool on this table, when it was in the old Hendren home on Vancouver Street (it was there until the mid-1970s).

He also told me a few more details about his grandfather George: He came west with the railway, building many of the bridges along the CPR's Crowsnest Pass line.  The family lived in Cranbrook for a few years, finally arriving in Creston about 1907.  Here, George built many houses and other structures, including the Presbyterian Church.

Both Stan and his son were glad to hear that the pool table had surfaced (it had been passed through one branch of the family, and wound up in Calgary), and that it had found a good home here.  And we are very glad to have it here.  Not only does it have a great story behind it relating to local history, it's also a very unique object in and of itself.  The top of the pool table rotates back through 90 degrees, and becomes the seat back of a sofa:

I've just got back from the Creston Public Library, where Carrie, Carol, and I have just finished hanging the Art/History exhibit - and it looks great! (If I do say so myself).



In the last few days, we've received several additional works of art on loan specially for the show.  Final count: 22 paintings, four fruit labels, three photographs, one saw, and an iron.  31 historic works of art altogether.



Most of the exhibit is in the boardroom at the library.  I'll have to go back to get some more photos of it; just as we finished hanging the paintings, another group came in to use the boardroom.



Seven of the images are hung in the main part of the Library.  We have a mini "buildings of Creston" theme happening in the area of the computers,



and James McDowell's stunning painting of the Museum greets you as soon as you walk in the door.



Each image has a history panel next to it, that tells you a little bit about the painting, the history it represents, and/or the artist.  The best part is, most of the artwork is rarely, if ever, on public display, and now you have a chance to see all of it, all at once. 
It's great show! But don't just take my word for it - go check it out yourself.  It's open throughout Library hours until February 25, and we're hosting a Curators' Reception on February 11, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM

As you may be aware, 2011 will be the 70th annual Blossom Festival. What does that have to do with crops being grown on the flats? Not much - but I was going through newspapers today looking for details on the first Festivals, and, as usual, I got sidetracked.

The new crop being heralded in April 1941 was peppermint.  Here's the April 18 1941 article that caught my eye:

"Possibility of Peppermint Plant is Rumoured - Flats Offering New Experimental Data.

"While not confirmed at press time, by the men interested in the project, it is understood that plans and other data are now being secured, to see if peppermint can be grown on the Creston Flats in commercial quantities.  If the experiment is successful it will mean another industry for Creston and district.  It is reported that a new plant will extract the peppermint juices for flavouring purposes."

And a follow-up from May 2:

"Herman Adams, founder of the agricultural idea of peppermint production on the Kootenay Flats, told the Review , that while it was too late to grow the peppermint plants this year, he would be producing them next year.  Mr Adams further stated, that a plant for peppermint extraction would also accompany the growing of plants."

I wonder if Mr. Adams ever did start growing the peppermint plants in commercial quantities?  Actually, from what I hear about mint's tendency to spread like crazy, I wonder if anyone has ever succeeded in growing it in anything less than commercial quantities?  And I'm not aware of there ever having been a facility in the Valley for extracting peppermint flavouring.